Get far enough from something and you forget why you (fill in the blank) it anyway. Time and distance have the unique power of making things - anything - grow smaller. Favorite movies become "why did I like that anyway?" Old hurts scar over, and sometimes you can't even remember why the hurt happened in the first place.
Recently, someone I know who says they are a Christian (and they go to church, so they must be) did something that I thought was pretty despicable. They flat out lied to my face, and when confronted about it later, they flat out lied to me and the president of the company.
It reminded me of why I left the church, why I (for the most part) left the faith...and why I don't particularly trust Christians.
Christians have a problem with truth. They have to...being a Christian means that you have accepted something on the basis of how it makes you feel, but is not supported by (and in many ways is contradicted by) truth. Most Christians base their lives, beliefs, faith, and actions on what they call The Word of God. Which is, of course, the Bible.
The Bible is filled with inconsistencies, contradictions, and inaccuracies. It promotes philosophies that are ignored by people who claim to believe the Bible. They hire pastors and preachers to tell them what it means, and if they disagree with what those people say, they fire them. They flat out disobey some of the simplest and most straightforward instructions in the Bible, and then either justify their actions by saying the Bible does not exactly means what it says (the original Greek argument) or that they are only human and God forgives their sin.
The whole arena of Christian apologetics arose because people early on began to realize that the Bible does not agree with itself, and that the Christian church does not agree with the Bible. So somebody had to come up with some pretty powerful excuses...thus, apologetics.
The issue of truth is a big one. Because the Bible is so filled with nonsense, inaccuracies and contradictions, and because so many so-called bible believers totally disregard much of its teachings and blame it on "apologetics" (different meanings, issues of interpretation, etc) - anyone who says they believe the Bible is saying that they believe something they know is untrue, or inaccurate, or nonsensical, and they can make it say anything they want it to say.
That kind of person has a problem with truth, period. A religion that maintains itself by untruth and by ignoring truth will attract people who have a problem with truth. They feel comfortable in denial, ignorance, and avoidance. They attack people who disagree with them...they don't address the points of disagreement, but they attack the person for daring to disagree with the Word of God.
But they pretend not to notice that others in their church, all around them, even they themselves, are disobeying the Word of God, or ignoring the fact that this so-called Word of God is filled with distortions, inaccuracies and contradicitions...ie, untruth.
If you get comfortable with nontruth, with denial, with avoidance...you can do just about anything anywhere and get away with it. You can claim to be a Christian, and then lie straight-faced to people who know the truth but are letting you hang yourself with your own words.
I knew there was a reason I left that all behind.
Good riddance.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
You've Never Seen Everything
You know the old saying - "been there, done that"?
No, you haven't. None of us have.
In the past few years, I have "discovered" the Buddhist law of impermanence. It is one of the core energies of the universe...everything always changes. I may have gone to Niagra Falls years ago, but guess what...today everything is different. Me, the water, the people, the configuration of the clouds, the quality of the air, the thoughts I am thinking and the emotions I am feeling.
At this very moment, I am entirely different atomic construct than I was one year ago. Hell, than I was yesterday.
Take a breath. Inhale. Exhale.
In the moment that it took you to engage in that simple activity…or to have read these words…everything changed. Everything. Several million of your cells split, and split again. Millions died in the process, and millions more – entirely new organic entities – were born.
On the subatomic level, billions and billions of quarks, muons, nuons, and other quantum particles fluctuated, changed energy emanations, structure and orientation. As a result, millions and millions of electrons, protons, and neutrons changed shape, speed of momentum, and alignment. Chemical processes – motivated by all this quantum, atomic and cellular shift – also took place, altering your organic chemistry, your health, and your lifespan.
In your brain, thousands of neural pathways were created and thousands more ceased to exist. You may have recognized it as part of the imaginary, unseen but still noticed mental activity taking place behind your vision as you observed and interacted with the world around you. Every sound you heard, even the breath that you took, changed the architecture of your brain’s information processing hardware.
So, in the amount of time you have taken to read this blog...you became a different person. YOU (as you exist right now) have never seen everything. In fact, at any given moment, you have NEVER seen ANYTHING. Everything is new. At every moment.
Wow and gulp! That is amazing news for people who love adventure, and scary news for people who need control. But...it can be good news for anybody because - since we are changing every second, and the universe is changing along with us - while I may have been a control freak this morning, I can become an adventurer by drive time this afternoon.
It helps me not to judge any situation, relationship, or experience with "been there, done that." The universe, and every living (and non-living) thing in it, is capable of infinite surprise.
You've never seen everything. You've never seen anything. Welcome to the new world, and the new you.
Namaste.
No, you haven't. None of us have.
In the past few years, I have "discovered" the Buddhist law of impermanence. It is one of the core energies of the universe...everything always changes. I may have gone to Niagra Falls years ago, but guess what...today everything is different. Me, the water, the people, the configuration of the clouds, the quality of the air, the thoughts I am thinking and the emotions I am feeling.
At this very moment, I am entirely different atomic construct than I was one year ago. Hell, than I was yesterday.
Take a breath. Inhale. Exhale.
In the moment that it took you to engage in that simple activity…or to have read these words…everything changed. Everything. Several million of your cells split, and split again. Millions died in the process, and millions more – entirely new organic entities – were born.
On the subatomic level, billions and billions of quarks, muons, nuons, and other quantum particles fluctuated, changed energy emanations, structure and orientation. As a result, millions and millions of electrons, protons, and neutrons changed shape, speed of momentum, and alignment. Chemical processes – motivated by all this quantum, atomic and cellular shift – also took place, altering your organic chemistry, your health, and your lifespan.
In your brain, thousands of neural pathways were created and thousands more ceased to exist. You may have recognized it as part of the imaginary, unseen but still noticed mental activity taking place behind your vision as you observed and interacted with the world around you. Every sound you heard, even the breath that you took, changed the architecture of your brain’s information processing hardware.
So, in the amount of time you have taken to read this blog...you became a different person. YOU (as you exist right now) have never seen everything. In fact, at any given moment, you have NEVER seen ANYTHING. Everything is new. At every moment.
Wow and gulp! That is amazing news for people who love adventure, and scary news for people who need control. But...it can be good news for anybody because - since we are changing every second, and the universe is changing along with us - while I may have been a control freak this morning, I can become an adventurer by drive time this afternoon.
It helps me not to judge any situation, relationship, or experience with "been there, done that." The universe, and every living (and non-living) thing in it, is capable of infinite surprise.
You've never seen everything. You've never seen anything. Welcome to the new world, and the new you.
Namaste.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Waking Up In Interesting Times
You have to give credit to PrezBO, the left and right wing media (we all know there is no in-between or "fair and balanced", right?), Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Tea Partiers, Shirley Sherrod and Imam Rauf. Today, more people are jumping into the political fray than I have ever seen in my life...and I am way older than 50% of the country.
We are defining ourselves as liberal, conservative, libertarian, independent. Those labels seem to be more important than black, white, gay, straight, male, female, old, young. I met one of my son's friends the other day, a pretty average 24-year old guy, and he asked me - "are you liberal or conservative?" I nearly fell over with laughter as I realized that - whatever else they have done - the clowns of the political, religious and media world have managed to wake up Americans.
I think we are all in a sleep haze, much like we are when we are awakened at 3am by the dog barking and fearsome noises somewhere in the house - and we are wondering "what the hell is going on?"
Nevertheless, we are awake. And that feels like a first for me, at least since the late '60's. We were probably more stoned than awake back then, but at least we were paying attention. (Hey, alternate realities are better than no realities, which is a symptom of narcolepsy. If you are asleep, what is real and unreal are irrelevant).
This blog is being written to react and confront and agitate. I hope to observe, question, challenge and infuriate. I want people to react to the blogstuff that makes it to this site. I hope many others will join me in waking up - and shouting at each other.
Words are weapons, yes - but I would much rather be shot by a word than by a .45. Words may hurt feelings, but come on, mamby pambies...! Let's grow up and toughen up. Let's kick ass. Let's call a spade a spade (no racial meaning implied).
My hope is to wake you up, or at least to grab your eyelid and force your eye open, force you to look - and perhaps you will see.
All kinds of lovely, crazy, whacky, future-changing, history-defining STUFF is happening in our world. Incredible TV shows! Mosques at Ground Zero! Wars and rumor of wars! 3-D movies as commonplace entertainment! 2012! Gay evangelical, coke-snorting pastors! The religious right! The religious left! The left behind!
It's enough to make you WAKE UP! And rub your eyes! And say - "eh? blotcher bulldoo?"
We are defining ourselves as liberal, conservative, libertarian, independent. Those labels seem to be more important than black, white, gay, straight, male, female, old, young. I met one of my son's friends the other day, a pretty average 24-year old guy, and he asked me - "are you liberal or conservative?" I nearly fell over with laughter as I realized that - whatever else they have done - the clowns of the political, religious and media world have managed to wake up Americans.
I think we are all in a sleep haze, much like we are when we are awakened at 3am by the dog barking and fearsome noises somewhere in the house - and we are wondering "what the hell is going on?"
Nevertheless, we are awake. And that feels like a first for me, at least since the late '60's. We were probably more stoned than awake back then, but at least we were paying attention. (Hey, alternate realities are better than no realities, which is a symptom of narcolepsy. If you are asleep, what is real and unreal are irrelevant).
This blog is being written to react and confront and agitate. I hope to observe, question, challenge and infuriate. I want people to react to the blogstuff that makes it to this site. I hope many others will join me in waking up - and shouting at each other.
Words are weapons, yes - but I would much rather be shot by a word than by a .45. Words may hurt feelings, but come on, mamby pambies...! Let's grow up and toughen up. Let's kick ass. Let's call a spade a spade (no racial meaning implied).
My hope is to wake you up, or at least to grab your eyelid and force your eye open, force you to look - and perhaps you will see.
All kinds of lovely, crazy, whacky, future-changing, history-defining STUFF is happening in our world. Incredible TV shows! Mosques at Ground Zero! Wars and rumor of wars! 3-D movies as commonplace entertainment! 2012! Gay evangelical, coke-snorting pastors! The religious right! The religious left! The left behind!
It's enough to make you WAKE UP! And rub your eyes! And say - "eh? blotcher bulldoo?"
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